Jennifer Pharr Davis: Triumph on the Trail

Each year, hundreds attempt to hike the 2,181 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. Long-distance hiker Jennifer Pharr Davis did it in 46 and a half days to become the overall speed record holder. Hear her tell the tale. The National Geographic Live! series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to your YouTube feed. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday. Upcoming Events at National Geographic Live!Get the Book.

Jennifer Pharr Davis: The value of the trail is
always going to be found in your experience. I wasn't having a
whole lot of fun. I was not in control. The only thing I had control over
was myself and my attitude. When I finally realized that, the
trail started to get easier. When I got to the end, I was a
completely different person. And I like the woman at the end a whole
lot more that the girl who had started.

Hey y'all thanks for coming out. I'm really excited to
be here. I am a hiker, I love to hike, I've hiked all over the world. And
still, the trail that means the most to me, the trail that has changed my life
the most, is the Appalachian Trail. And I have actually done the entire
Appalachian Trail now three separate times.

And it was the most recent time in 2011, where with my
husband's help and a whole lot of help, I started really early and
actually didn't stop until 10 or 11 o'clock at night. And I set the
overall record, and along the way averaged 47 miles a day, for 46 straight days!
But hopefully, hopefully tonight and especially in this place, we can agree
that a journey of any distance or any speed always starts with a
single step. Right? And my first step, into the wilderness took place when
I was 21-years old. I had just graduated from college, and like a lot of
recent college grads I had absolutely no clue what it was I was going to
do with my life. So, I needed time, I wanted a place to figure things out. But
from what I had heard about it, and in my 21-year old head, you know, hiking
the Appalachian Trail was just walking. So I figured how hard, how hard
could it be?

So, I started on my own in Georgia, with all my brother's old
boy-scout gear in the month of March, and my goal was to make it all the
way to Maine. And I realized very early on that walking the
Appalachian Trail was the hardest thing I had ever done. And it
never got a whole lot easier. About three weeks into my first journey, I
made it to the Smoky Mountain National Park. I had stopped at a shelter, and
I remember that night just being curled up in my sleeping bag, and
shivering, and listening to the sound of rain fall on the shelter roof. And
then the next morning when I woke up, the first thought that went through my
head was, “Oh thank you God, I don't hear rain on the shelter roof anymore. It
must've stopped.” And then I looked outside. And what did I see? Snow!
There was six inches of snow already on the ground, and it was coming down in
blizzard-like conditions. Hiking down the Appalachian Trail is
difficult. Right? It is especially difficult in a snowstorm, because the
entire 2,185-mile trail that goes through 14 separate states is marked
with only one single symbol. Do you know what that is? A white
blaze. a two-by-six inch white rectangle that is usually painted on
trees. So now I am looking for a white mark on trees that are covered
in snow. But you know, on the bright side, on the bright side, I am an
optimist. Most of the time the trail, or what I thought was the trail, was
inside the forest. And so the trees somewhat protected me from the
wind and the snow that was coming down. But then at one point the
trail left the forest and went on this long, exposed ridge line.

And as soon as I left the tree cover, well, I felt the wind,
and I felt the snow, and it burned, just burned my skin. And, so naturally I
ducked my head and closed my eye, and kept walking as quickly as I could to
get back into the forest. But when I got there, I lifted my head and I
couldn't open my eye. It had literally frozen shut, which I didn't know
that could happen but it can. It can. And I had to stand there and
pick icicles off of my eyelashes, and wipe frozen crust out of the corner of
my eye until I could once again lift my eyelid, and regain my sight, and
keep hiking down the mountain.

Now thankfully, thankfully I made it out of the Smokys and
after about a month of walking I made it to Virginia. And I was
so excited to be in Virginia because for the first time on my trip, it
actually started to feel like Spring. The weather was a little
warmer. I could wear my hiking shorts instead of just sticky
rain-pants all day. And there were actually wild flowers coming up along
the trail. So, while I was no longer always pre-occupied with Mother Nature,
now I started to enjoy the human nature aspect of the A.T.

And again there's a lot that makes the A.T. really special, but
at the top of that list, it has to be community. I mean, the community on the
A.T. is probably the most quirky, eccentric community I have ever been a
part of. But it's also the most wonderful group of people I have
ever known. The two main groups on the trail are gonna be, you know, folks
right out of high school or college, and then individuals who have
recently retired. Because those are the two times in life where
you can go and take a five month hike. And what I discovered is that that
is a really amazing combination. I mean as a 21-year old I was
relieved to meet other people my age and realize they didn't
have it all figured out either. But more than that I was really fortunate
to spend a lot of time and a lot of miles with people in their 50's
or 60's or early 70's. And they had a lifetime's worth of experience, and
knowledge, and wisdom. And on the trail they had time to share their
stories. And there are many occasions when after hiking a full
day with another hiker and then parting ways, it felt like I knew that person as
well as someone I had known my entire life. And I loved that. And
I loved meeting new people on the trail.

Now after, uh, after about two and half months of
hiking I made it to Pennsylvania. And on one hand I was really
excited because I had come over 1,000 miles and, you know, before I'd
started the trail that kinda seemed impossible. The only problem
was, hiking a 1,000 miles had been the hardest thing I had ever done in my
entire life, and I still had over a 1,000 miles left to go. And to add to that,
Pennsylvania is not the easiest state on the trail. Does anyone in
here know what Pennsylvania is known for? Rocks! Pennsylvania
rocks. It's like all the other states took all their rocks and
just dumped them in Pennsylvania. But in Pennsylvania, I told myself things
will get better when you get out of the rocks, things will get better when
you get to the next state.

But pretty soon, uh, after I made it out of Pennsylvania, I
had the hardest day I've ever had on the trail, and one of the hardest days of
my life. And, uh, something really tragic happened when one morning I was
hiking by myself to the top of a mountain, and about 20 minutes before I arrived
on top of the mountain, someone had driven up and taken their own
life. And I was the first person to come across the scene. And I
didn't know if it was a suicide or a murder, I didn't know what to think. I
just felt like time stood still. It seemed like my stomach dropped
out of my body and I turned and I ran. And I ran to some point where
I stopped and I pulled out my cellphone and I called 9-1-1. And
the police came out and they met me on the trail and they sat me down and
asked me questions for about 15 minutes. About 15 minutes of
questions and then when they were done, they packed up their paperwork and
they looked at me and they said, “Okay, you can keep hiking now.” And because I
didn't know what to do, I just kept hiking. And looking back, I know it was the
best thing I could've done. I learned in the hours and the days after
that incident that there is something very powerful and very healing about
physical forward motion. And also at that point in the trail, I realized that
my friends and family were not 1,000 miles away. My friends and
family were all around me on the trail. These people who I
thought were strangers when we started in Georgia, well the hikers a few
miles ahead of me or behind me, they all rushed to me. I mean, they
rushed to my side, and they said, “If you want us to walk with you every step
to Maine, we will. If you need space, we'll give you space. If you want food, you
can have our food. And thru-hikers never offer other thru-hikers food.
And it was that accountability, and that support, and that sense of community that
gave me the encouragement I needed to keep going.

Well, then I got to Massachusetts, and up until
Massachusetts, I had had only two bug bites the entire trip. Then my
first day in MA, I got 137 mosquito bites. And I counted twice, okay! So, I
know. And that was before we reaching, uh, Vermont and discovering, you know,
the black flies of New England and um, you know, I had this day in Vermont where
I was, uh, you know, very hot. At this point it was humid, it was in the 90's. And
I was surrounded by a cloud of black flies, and my bug spray kept sweating off
every 15 minutes, and I was just miserable. And I was so mad because at
this point I thought the trail should've been fun. I thought it
should've been, you know, less difficult. And I actually thought about
quitting. I mean, I had come through 12 states and I only had two left to
go, and I thought about what it would look like to get off the trail. And
I did some pretty serious soul searching. I finally recognized that
on the trail... Well, first of all, the trail is innately difficult. At
no point would it be easy. But on the trail, more than that, I was not in
control. Duh! Right? It kinda seems like that's obvious. But I
think, you know, as a 21-year old in our culture, that was a hard pill to
swallow. The only thing I had control over was myself and my
attitude. When I finally realized that, that was the moment the trail
started to get easier. Which is really saying something, because the last
two states are by far the toughest. I mean, Maine and New Hampshire, up
there you don't hike with your feet, you just scramble up mountains and
you slide down them on your bottom. But I had a blast, 'cause I was a completely
different person. When I got to the end I was a completely different
person, and I like the woman at the end a whole lot more than the
girl who had started.

When it was over, when I got up to Katahdin, I did what most
any hiker does. I got off trail. And I think everything said that, you
know, I should've been happy. But then the weeks started to pass, and the
months started to pass, and all I could think about was the trail. And
it was at that point I started saving up time away from work, I started
saving up money from work, and I started to plan my next adventure, my
next hike. And for the next three years fell into a routine of working
and hiking and working and hiking. And, by the time I was just 25,
I basically admitted that I had a problem. I mean, I was a hiker. That's
where all my time and all my money went. And at that point, I
decided that I wanted to try and establish a women's record on the
A.T.

So on June 8th, 2008, Brew, that's my husband, Brew and I
were married and then just 12 days later, we went up to Maine, we started at
Katahdin, and we began to work our way south-bound. And talk about a
honeymoon. But that said, after just 57 days of being a team, working together,
we made it to Springer Mountain, Georgia. And along the way, I had averaged 38
miles a day. And that's not too shabby, right? But now there's this small
voice inside of me that said, I might have what it would take to set the
overall record. It got to the point where I knew there were only two
options. Either we would go back and try for the overall record or
else I would always look back and I would always wonder what might
have been. And I didn't want to look back and I didn't want to
wonder.

So, in the summer of 2011, we went back to the
Appalachian Trail. And we went back to Katahdin, up in Maine. This was my
third time. For the first few days it was as we had anticipated. But
then on day five we got to Saddleback Mountain in Maine. And I was
scrambling up to the summit when I started to feel a really
sharp pain between my knee and my ankle in my right leg. When I got
to the ridge, I was in so much pain that I put all my weight on the
other side of my body and just limped along. Until the exact same
pain that was in my right leg developed in my left leg. Within
three hours I had full-blown shin-splints. But if I could just make
it to Vermont. Has anyone in here hiked in Vermont? A lot
hikers actually call Vermont 'Ver-mud', okay? 'Cause once you get to
Ver-mud or Vermont there's a lot more dirt, if not a foot of mud that
you're hiking through. And I thought maybe if I could just get there, it
would be soft enough to where my legs could heal. So, now all I had to do was
make it through New Hampshire to get there. And if there's one
state on the entire trail where I just wake up in the morning
and pray for good weather, it's New Hampshire. When I got there, I had about 24
hours of what I will generously call decent weather. And then I
was going up the slopes of Mount Washington, which is not only one of the
highest peaks on the entire trail, but at one point Mount Washington had
the highest recorded wind speed of any place on the planet. Sure
enough, as soon as I got above tree-line, that wind picked up and then the
clouds rolled in, and then the rain. The rain started to fall. When I
got up to Franconia Ridge, well now the last week of June, I was hiking in the
middle of a sleet storm. And finally I accepted what deep down I
already knew. And that was I was moderately hypothermic, and it was
becoming a lot worse very quickly.

By the time I made it to the base of that mountain, I was so
stiff, I was so cold, that I could barely bend my joints. This is how I
was moving, I looked like Frankenstein's monster, I did. But my saving
grace is that, Brew, you know, he knew there was bad weather. So, in the middle
of the day he had hiked in, he had set up our tent at the base of the mountain,
and as soon as I saw it, I got inside. So there I was inside the tent, and
I put on a warm fleece and a dry rain jacket, and fresh socks. Fresh socks
are like the best thing ever when you're a hiker. But looking around
the tent, I, you know, soon discovered there was not an extra set of
shorts or pair of pants. And so, I turned to the corner of the tent where
my cold, wet, icy shorts sat in the middle of a puddle. Ugh! And
then I turned to my husband. And I glanced back at the puddle and I
glanced back at my husband and I said, “I want your shorts.” Right? And
this is so my husband, because he did not bat an eye, he did not disagree, he
just looked straight back at me and said, “Ask nicely.” Right. Had to have some
dignity, some standards on the trail. So I did, and I got his shorts and I
was able to keep going. And, um, you know, I tell that story and I hope it's
clear, I mean, I think it's clear after that story, that it was really my
husband's support that always allowed me to keep going. And I
know that I would have quit without Brew. 'Cause the first day we
made it to Vermont, the first day we got to that one state where I was
sure it was all gonna get better.

Well, my first day in Vermont was the worst day of the
entire summer. I mean, my body couldn't take it anymore and I got sick. So
I was even more depleted and becoming severely dehydrated. And you know, at
this point I wasn't even hiking one mile per hour. So, for the first time on
any trail, any hike I quit. I mean 100 percent I quit. I told myself I'd
just somehow get to the next road crossing. And when I made it
there, we were going home. So when I finally arrived, I saw Brew and I
told him how much I hurt. And I told him how sick I was. And
I told him that we were done with the record. And he looked back at
me and this is so not my husband. Because he looked back at me and he
said, “Suck it up!” And he said, “If this is really what you want, that's
fine, you can quit. But you just can't quit right now.” He said, “Right
now I think you feel too bad to make a good decision. So right now you got
to eat, drink, and take medicine and keep going. And tomorrow night, if you
still want to quit, we'll go home.” So I left that road crossing counting
the minutes and the miles until I could officially throw in the
towel. But after the 12 slowest, most painful miles that I have ever known, I
started to feel about that much better. And as soon as I felt a hair
better, well, you know, I no longer thought that I could set the record on the
Appalachian Trail, but I didn't want to get off the Appalachian Trail. I
wanted to keep going, I wanted to see what would happen. And never again
that summer did I think about stopping.

That summer, one thing the trail forced me to do was
just live in the moment. 'Cause if I thought about yesterday, I was
exhausted. And, if I looked ahead, forget about tomorrow. If I looked
ahead to the afternoon or the evening, I was demoralized. But I always
knew that I could take one more step, and I always thought, I always hoped that
I could hike one more mile. That was my mantra all summer. One more
step, one more mile, one more step, one more mile. And on the trail that summer I
wasn't having a whole lot of fun. But every morning I woke up with a
strong sense of purpose, and the joy of knowing that I was getting
to live my dream. And after 46 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes, we made it to
Springer Mountain, Georgia. And we did what almost everyone thought was
impossible. We set the overall record on the Appalachian Trail.

And I want to share my experience with you right now with
a few pictures from the Appalachian Trail record.

Jennifer Pharr Davis: Triumph on the Trail

Each year, hundreds attempt to hike the 2,181 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. Long-distance hiker Jennifer Pharr Davis did it in 46 and a half days to become the overall speed record holder. Hear her tell the tale. The National Geographic Live! series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to your YouTube feed. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday. Upcoming Events at National Geographic Live!Get the Book.